Piolit

Wondering if anyone knows of any way to queue up jobs on a single computer to be used in a distributed rendering network. Backburner w/ DR does not work. Is there any program that can queue up a job list to be used with DR? Appreciate any help I can get.

-Matt

Parker1

Why not just use BackBurner? PreCalculate your light cache and IR files and then send your jobs to BB as stripped renderings.

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Brian M. Parker
Cooper Carry & Associates
www.coopercarry.com

Piolit

That would just save me render time. The problem I'm having is that my renders are taking upwards of 20 hours on a single machine. So I set up a backburner queue to render overnight on the network with 5 jobs on five machines. When I get back the next morning, I have 5 renders that are 60% complete on each machine. If I had a distributed rendering queue, I could focus all the computers on one job at a time, thus if I got in and the renderings were not complete at least 3 out of the 5 would be.



Is there such a program/script that anyone has heard of?

Thanks,
Matt

BrianKitts

have you tried using the batch render panel? set everything up for your system to run a distributive render, but then send the job through the batch renderer instead of backbruner. I don't have distributive rendering setup right now (we haven't switched our farm up to 1.5 yet) to test if it'll work or not. but it's worth a shot

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Brian Kitts
ANSHEN + ALLEN

Piolit

I have not tried that yet, but thats a great idea. I'll let you know if it works. Seems to be a little more tedious though (than backburner) since I can only send jobs from 1 max file and probably need to save scene states for each camera (since I have different things hidden per view), but if it works it will be work it.

Thanks,
Matt

Parker1

Just vary the priority of each job start with 10, then 20, then 30, etc...BB will use all machines to finish the first job before it starts the second, then third, and so on.

__________________
Brian M. Parker
Cooper Carry & Associates
www.coopercarry.com

Piolit

The batch render works! BKitts you are a genius. I've been trying to get this to work for the last 2 weeks straight. This will be great for DR multiple camera animation. Thank you both very much for your help.

-Matt

ericbarlow21

Hi BKitts and Piolit

I am having the same issue but I do not understand the solution which you have found... is there anyway you could please give a more detailed overview on how to accomplish this?

I am very new to backburner, Vray D.R., and have never even used batch render before...

Any tips or instructions would be more appriciated!

Thanks,

Eric

BrianKitts

you are trying to do two things at once which can't be done (AFAIK), you need to pick either option A or option B

option A would be to setup backburner on your render nodes. There's plenty of directions in the MAX help files to allow you to do this. Then when you render a job you just click the "net render" button and send off a job to the farm." your job gets rendered out on a single node allowing you to keep working on your own workstation. more nodes you have more frames you can run at once.

option B. If you want to use all of the render nodes simultaneously you would setup distributed render through vray on your local machine. check out how here..
http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/150R..._rendering.htm


What I suggested before was using the batch render option in max (on the file menu under Rendering) to que jobs locally on your machine in order, and then possibly the distributed render would kick in so that all the nodes are helping on your current job. Like I said before that was a suggestion, but I've never tried it out personally. Seems like it would work. But this of course ties up your machine locally.


I'm not sure if you can use the "split scanlines" option in backburner with vray. I always just send out jobs on our farm, one image to one machine. That would be your only other option if it does work. Which would do what your after.....

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Brian Kitts
ANSHEN + ALLEN

BrianKitts

update: just ran a test, I guess you can strip render using vray.

So you need to get backburner and max installed on all your nodes, then once you can successfully send jobs to your nodes, use the split scanline option in backburner and all nodes will concentrate on one job at a time.

DR. is a different style beast which is also usefull, but in this case you don't need to use it.

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Brian Kitts
ANSHEN + ALLEN